Spam is junk and consumes energy

Electronic materials must not be disposed of with the household waste, a lot of people already know. But did you know that there is other junk mail that also hurts the environment? Are the "spam".
Origin of the name "Spam"-there are some hypotheses about the origin of the word spam. The most popular, however, involves a brand of ham in 1937: many believe that the term is an abbreviation for SPiced hAM, a canned ham spicy of the American company Hormel Foods.

(Image source: reproduction/Thinkstock)

This product was also sold in England, and it is at this time that the British comedy group Monty Python comes into play. In a frame of his TV show in the ' 70, the group staged in a restaurant serving large amounts of SPAM in every dish, even against the wishes of the customers.

From then on, spam became synonymous with everything that is sent in bulk and without the consent of the recipient.
Read more at: http://www.tecmundo.com.br/spam/223-o-que-e-spam-.htm#ixzz2IdkSQoZH

Returning to the subject, everyone complains of spam, unwanted e-mail messages, with the purpose of selling a product or infect your computer with viruses and stealing data.
But, according to a study the company McAfee (http://www.mcafee.com/es/), these emails not only annoy but create a huge waste of energy and, consequently, more carbon emissions.

Spam in the World-Of 220 billion emails sent every day in the world, only 37 billion (17%) are not spam. Are 183 billion spams per day, according to this story at http://www.good.is/posts/the-carbon-cost-of-spam-an-infographic/
It is estimated that every message sent emits 0.3 grams of CO2. Doing the math, are issued 54.9 thousand tonnes/day of CO2 on behalf of spammers. In a year are dumped about 20 million tons in the atmosphere with ads for "enlarge your penis" or "Rico working from home".

How does the power consumption-much of the energy consumption associated with the spam is generated by the receivers, you need to delete these messages and find emails that have been filtered by mistake in the Junk folder. This represents 52% of the "consumption-spam".

The same study done by McAfee ensures that the spam filters still save approximately 135 terawatt hour of energy per year, if there were no filters, the problem would be even greater. Despite this, fight the "disease" and not the "symptom" is, and always has been, more effective.

Solution-With this study, the company wants to highlight the impact of spam on the planet. One of the solutions the study indicates is to install more accurate filters to try and cut down on junk e-mail management. If all mailboxes were protected by a filter better, energy waste could be reduced by up to 75%. But the main solution still is awareness.

War against spam-comparison, the volcano Eyjafjallajökull (I searched for the name on Google) emitted 150 thousand tons of CO2 per day, while in eruption. I mean, spam sent daily correspond to 36.6% of the capacity of the Icelandic volcano.

In October 2011 Microsoft released a report of cyber-security, which took a look at, among other things, the types of spam blocked by your e-mail application, Microsoft Exchange. The report concluded that most of the spam messages are, unsurprisingly, product announcements:

That classic spam message, in which a Nigerian Prince asks a bank transfer, totaled at the time, incredible 13.2% of all spam emails.

And, of course, spammers are always helpful when it comes to sex, 8.6% of spam are related to sex, is for announcements of Viagra and similar drugs (3.8%) or dating sites, pornography and other sexually explicit services (4.8%). But it seems that statistics are falling precipitously over the years.

Microsoft Exchange was blocked only 25 billion spam messages in the first half of 2011, compared with 89.2 billion in the same period in 2010. The reason: two of the largest spambots out there (Cutwail and Rustock) were shot down.